


i would have saved you if i could

by Thewordlover



Category: Hospice (album)
Genre: Abusive Relationship, Album fic, F/M, Grieving, Healthcare Facility, dying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-23
Updated: 2014-04-23
Packaged: 2018-01-20 12:01:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1509725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thewordlover/pseuds/Thewordlover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You were beautiful, horrifying, otherworldly. You made my eyes twitch and my toes shake, and I didn’t understand why, but it was unprofessional. I should have quit, but instead I took care of you. I wanted so badly to save you, to do my job well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i would have saved you if i could

The hospital was hiring, the summer of ’04. i had some prior experience, help in the student clinic at Bennington, a CNA license, and then I was working 12 hour shifts, the smell of death on my scrubs and in my hair. It filled me with unease, minute to minute, but I felt the burn of doing good, and that I could not leave (or the paychecks).

 

The first night you were still in your party clothes, skin roughly covered with makeup. When I took your pulse, some blush got on my hands, and I was still young and stupid, afraid of spreading things. Your eyes sockets were hollow, the doctors said you were a repeat offender, whatever that meant. You were beautiful, horrifying, otherworldly. You made my eyes twitch and my toes shake, and I didn’t understand why, but it was unprofessional. I should have quit, but instead I took care of you. I wanted so badly to save you, to do my job well.

Soon, I was assigned to you full-time, and stopped trying to swallow down the lump in my throat that was my constant companion.

 

Your hands were always cold, no matter how long they were held under the blankets. Later, I would sit perched on the edge of the bed trying to rub the feeling back in, a hopeless exercise.

I remember the short bursts of euphoria that punctuated our shared bereavement. You would be paging through the newspaper, sleeping, staring off into space, your lips slowly opening and closing like a fish, and I would be perched beside you, waiting for the slightest request for help. Sometimes I would knit, scarves that became throws that became afghans as the nights pressed on. My shifts all ended with me staying close to you, refusing to leave until my eyes could be barely dragged open, and then I would wander home, too empty to use the subway and too tired to sleep.  
But sometimes you would look up, meet my eyes, and be present in that place with me for a while. We would talk, our voices cracking against the immoveable, weary walls. You were so beautiful and fragile, your gray eyes glowed with a feverish light, or maybe a holy one. I was so shy, the first time you had to take my hand, reached over the edge and found the fingernails, the palms. You had a ghostly touch, before you even were one.

I was slim, brittle. My hands never shook when I took vitals, but the rest of the time was a struggle to keep my paper thin tongue from melting with the currents flowing through my body, my hands from detaching and falling onto the stamped-flat carpet. I was supposed to be strong for you, and I often was, but I couldn’t be that for myself at all.

Once, on the way home at 4am, the thought that if you hadn’t been sick, I wouldn’t have met you. I crashed into my apartment a hurricane, smashed my body against the walls, threw books in a rain to the carpet, collapsed. You did all this to me, but really I did it to myself.

 

Those silver rings, they came from a tiny shop on the corner near my apartment. It was spartan, full of silver and earth tones, and dust. You would have loved it. The woman behind the counter asked when the wedding was, who’s the lucky girl. I couldn’t keep the tears from gleaming in my eyes, the bitterness out of my tone, and she was silent as I walked away, back careful and straight. $300 from my meager paycheck. I went without, happily, for you, for us.  
I carried the boxes in my breast pocket, kept them warm against the wind as I walked down old Manhattanland towards you in the hospital. You were the only one I wanted to see, and I feared your sharp words and thrown phones. You made my insides shake, and you were the one who made them calm again.

You were released. You had maybe twelve months in you and wanted to spend them somewhere far from the stench of death. You even said you wanted to spend them with me, so I moved your few cartons of clothes and books into my tiny apartment, and there we were, no longer aide and patient, but knowing we could never let those roles go completely. I made you breakfast, laid out your pills, made love to you in quivering bursts and starts between the flannel sheets and thick quilt. Your bones hurt me when we held each other in the dark, your words bruised my eardrums, and I know I made you distant and cold when I asked what you wanted done, after. But I had to. It was my job. You said cremation, and I threw up. You would be ashes before Christmas.

The procedure was safe, non-intrusive; they told you that over and over. You were solidly in the first trimester, it was okay, it was going to be fine, you would be fine and it would never feel a thing. I sat in the cold light of the waiting room, biting my nails until they bled. Your eyes were unseeing when you returned in the wheelchair. You balanced on me the short walk to the cab, said nothing. We were bigger strangers than we’d ever been before, and there was plenty before. I cried in the shower, sobs paralyzing me under the water. I was so selfish. I’m sorry.

You started leaving, after. Throwing things on the floor and into your bag and at me. Books, shoes, dishes. I think you need to hurt me like the world hurt you, or like I did. I tried to make you see reason, then I tried to just make you look at me. I said all the rights thing and you would still go, the door slamming feebly. I would lay alone in the chasms of the bed, cold air billowing through the thin windows and threatening to freeze me whole. 

Other nights, you were newly home again, and you would hold me on the couch, your presence a relief, and tell me about your grandfather’s summer cottage in the Catskills, and we would end up crying into the cushions, wanting that distant, trapped, wholesome light that we were denied. I can still see the swaying trees as you described them. And I can feel the burn of all the other things we recalled, the fucked up lives we always led, anyway, before and after and during.

 

That night, I had to force my bleeding feet over the threshold of your doorway, they didn’t want to move. You were lying in that bed with wild eyes and flyaway hair, a sheen of sweat covering your skeletal frame. I couldn’t speak, we were strangers again, so close to the end and unable to pull words from our brains. I handed you a cup of ice and swallowed back bile. You were shaking with adrenaline, tear tracks bold in the lamplight, slivers of blood from tight gripped fingernails. And the torrent of abuse fell from your lips like bullets. Where had I been? What the fuck was my problem, couldn’t I see what was happening?I held my arms out and welcomed them. I deserved every throw of your fist that fell weak and pitiful on the blankets.

You silenced slowly, and I sat down on the edge of the bed, tried to read the news in the curve of your jaw and clouds in your eyes. Thunder rolled between us, and outside the wind blew, flag clattering, it was all far away and you were dying.  
“Where does it hurt?”  
You took my hand and placed it over your heart, your arms, your lips, your legs. You were calm, anger traded in for defeat. I passed over all, a mockery of cleansing rain, and then held your icy hands. When the sun rose, you were asleep, face tight and drawn, breathing shallow. Were you dreaming? Where had you gone? When had we become so unhappy? We had had something, hadn’t we? Something beyond stretched sheets and cold packs on broken bones. I know we did. Your face had glowed when I first gave the rings, but now the only lights were spasming pain and words slurred through morphine.

I dipped my face and kissed you, felt the icebergs drifting, the poison flowing clear. You were distant, almost gone. Sylvia, I’m sorry.

 

After, I can’t move for a long time. I think you’re inside me, my bones shattered and my eyes useless. The tears are slow, and then they won’t go. I can see you, everywhere and nowhere. You’re going to kill me like I killed you. Or maybe you’re going to use your words to slice me open, like you did so successfully in the past. I miss even that. I miss every wrenching thing we ever shared, and it makes me vomit all over the quilt.

When I wake up for the first time alone and done, there is no morgue and my nostrils are full of the smell of earth. You are gone, and I can’t move. My limbs are severed, lips paralyzed. The sensations return, but the damage is done. You are gone. I read all the right books, did all the right care practices, and you slipped through my fingers and disappeared. 

There is nothing on the shelves in our room by the end of the day, and I am folded over on the couch, trying to catch the aftershocks you must have left behind, if only I can find you one more time.

 

Sylvia, I loved you in a thoroughly useless way.

I’m sorry. The words are just chaff in the wind, but I can’t stop screaming into the void, trying to reach you, and maybe never will.


End file.
